AppsScriptPulse

Google Apps Script gets a public knowledge base of Github projects with Gassypedia

All the Google Apps Script related github activity is now on Google Bigquery and Google Looker. Here’s how it was done.

Bruce Mcpherson has recently revisited his work on the visual Google Apps Script explorer tool, scrviz. Bruce has been working diligently to address limitations with the Github API and overcome quota restrictions. This new iteration still allows users to explore Google Apps Script projects and creators, but this time through a shared Looker Studio dashboard. The underlying dataset has also been made available on BigQuery if you would like to do your own analysis.

Follow the source link to find out more and explore the data!

Source: Gassypedia – public Google Apps Script on Github – Desktop Liberation

New Google Apps Script library to convert files with the Drive API (including OCRing image file formats)

Apps Script library to convert between file types, including OCR for image to documents, with a huge repertoire of conversion combinations.

The Drive API offers a whole range of conversions between mimeTypes, but it’s a little fiddly to figure out exactly how. This library takes a file and an a desired output format and converts it for you. Sometimes, there’s not a direct route – for example if you need to convert a word file to a pdf, it first needs to get converted to a Google Doc, then to a Pdf. This library automatically works out and actions any intermediate conversions required.

For those who are unfamiliar MIME types (mimeTypes) is a standard way of identifying a file’s content type, such as text, image, or audio. The MIME type for a file is usually used by applications to determine how to open and display the file. Google Drive is able to convert various files, such as a MS Word document to Google Docs.

Sometimes there isn’t a direct route and this clever library from Bruce Mcpherson can help alleviate the pain. The library works by first checking if there is a direct route between the input and output file formats. If there is, it simply converts the file. If there is no direct route, the library will use the Drive API to first convert the file to a format that can be converted to the output format. For example, if you need to convert a Word file to a PDF, the library will first convert the Word file to a Google Doc, and then convert the Google Doc to a PDF.

Knowing what mimeType to use can be a bit of a challenge but you can also use the library to give a list of known types, or if you prefer a more readable list of Google Drive export MIME types.

Source: Convert any file with Apps Script – Desktop Liberation

Generating XML and HTML from JSON objects using Google Apps Script

A useful library to create prettified HTML, XML GraphML and other markups directly from Apps Script or JavaScript.

A long, long, long time ago Apps Script had a Xml class which was deprecated in favour of the current XML Service. One of the nice features of the old Xml class was the Xml.parseJS() method, which “given a JavaScript array … returns an XmlDocument representation”.

The current XML Service doesn’t have a JavaScript to XML parser, but Bruce Mcpherson has recently shared a library that can be used to easily convert JSON objects into XML and it’s many recognised formats like HTML. Bruce’s post shows how to can create various HTML page elements including head sections and tables. It’s also worth checking out Bruce’s other post on “Create GraphML markups from Apps Script” which is included in the source link.

Source: Markup HTML from JSON with Apps Script or JavaScript

Find and clone Apps Script projects from GitHub directly into the IDE with scrviz – Desktop Liberation

I thought it might be useful if you are learning Apps Script to be able to pull in examples to play around with. This latest release adds the ability to configure and clone projects from github directly into the Apps Script IDE.

We’ve previously highlighted Bruce Mcpherson’s visual Google Apps Script explorer tool, ‘scrviz’. If you are not familiar with this it is Bruce has figured a way to search and identify Google Apps Script projects publicly shared on GitHub. In this latest update to the tool you can now clone public Google Apps Script projects from scrviz straight into the Apps Script IDE.

The source link explains more about how you can do this:

Source: Find and clone Apps Script projects from github directly into the IDE with scrviz – Desktop Liberation